A Sun Tracker for Planetary Analog Rovers - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

A Sun Tracker for Planetary Analog Rovers

Matthew C. Deans, David Wettergreen, and Daniel Villa
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS '05), September, 2005

Abstract

This paper describes the principles, design, implementation, use, and performance of a sun tracker for fixed reference orientation estimation. With relatively simple, familiar, inexpensive and low power off-the-shelf components and straightfoward modeling and calibration, a sun tracker can provide full 3-DOF orientation with accuracy well within a degree of roll pitch and yaw, and without drift. This can enable high precision long distance navigation in a Mars relevant fashion, i.e. without use of physical properties such as Earth's magnetosphere or modern infrastructure such as GPS. Most importantly, the heading errors are fixed over time, unlike estimates derived from dead reckoning or integration of inertial rate sensors.

BibTeX

@conference{Deans-2005-9290,
author = {Matthew C. Deans and David Wettergreen and Daniel Villa},
title = {A Sun Tracker for Planetary Analog Rovers},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS '05)},
year = {2005},
month = {September},
keywords = {Sun tracker, sun sensor, camera calibration, position estimation},
}